Rita's Satellite
8:57pm EDT 20/09/2005

http://hurricane.accuweather.com/hurricane/storms.asp?ocean=atlantic&storm=Rita&imagetype=sat&partner=

Forecasters Fear Hurricane Rita's Strength
AP - 1 hour, 30 minutes ago

KEY WEST, Fla. - Rapidly strengthening Hurricane Rita lashed the Florida Keys on Tuesday and headed into the Gulf of Mexico.......

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AP - Tue Sep 20, 7:35 PM ET A ocean wave crashes over a sightseer in Key West, Fla. Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005, as Hurricane Rita brushes past the area. (AP Photo/J. Pat Carter)

Rita Threatens More New Orleans Flooding

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 28 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - The Army Corps of Engineers raced to patch New Orleans' fractured levee system Tuesday, residents were forced to decide yet again whether to stay or go as a new, rapidly strengthening hurricane threatened to flood the city anew.

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050921/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina

AP - Tue Sep 20, 7:41 PM ET
A barge sits in the Ninth Ward near a break in the London Avenue Canal levee Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005, in New Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers raced to patch New Orleans' fractured levee system and residents were forced to decide yet again whether to stay or go as a new, rapidly strengthening hurricane threatened to flood the city anew. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Reuters - Tue Sep 20, 7:54 PM ET
Waves lap over Havana's seafront boulevard El Malecon as Hurricane Rita caused minor flooding in northwest Cuba, where 60,000 people were evacuated from flood-prone areas. Most of Havana's 2.2 million residents stayed home, leaving the capital's street nearly deserted. REUTERS/Stringer

Rita Grows Into a Category 3 Hurricane

By MICHELLE SPITZER, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago

KEY WEST, Fla. - Hurricane Rita strengthened into a Category 3 storm packing 115 mph winds early Wednesday after lashing the Florida Keys and sparking anxiety as it headed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Forecasters feared Rita could further intensify in the Gulf and the storm's most likely destination by week's end was Texas, although Louisiana and northern Mexico were possibilities.

Rita, Now Category 4, Heads for Gulf Coast

AP - 1 hour, 14 minutes ago
GALVESTON, Texas - Residents of this island city packed up mementoes and pets and started evacuating Wednesday as Hurricane Rita intensified into a Category 4 storm with 135 mph winds and threatened to devastate the Texas coast or already-battered Louisiana by week's end. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for Galveston and New Orleans, one day after Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys as a Category 2 storm, causing relatively minor damage. Having seen what Katrina did, many residents decided not to take any chances.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/tropical_storms_and_hurricanes

AP - Tue Sep 20, 4:26 PM ET
This NOAA satellite image taken Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005 at 15:45 EDT shows clouds associated with Hurricane Rita emerging into the Gulf of Mexico from south of Florida. The storm is expected to move west-northwest through the Gulf over the next few days. Clouds associated with Hurricane Philippe can be seen northeast of the Windward Islands. The storm is expected to move gradually north-northwest over the next few days. (AP Photo/Weather Underground)

Rita Swirls Into Category 5 Storm in Gulf

By PAM EASTON, Associated Press Writer
58 minutes ago

GALVESTON, Texas - Gaining strength with frightening speed.
Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 165-mph (247 kmh) monster Wednesday as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050921

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AP - Wed Sep 21, 7:12 PM ET This satellite image provided by NOAA and taken at 15:45 EDT Wednesday Sept. 21 , 2005 shows Hurricane Rita over the Gulf of Mexico. Gaining strength with frightening speed, Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 165-mph (247 kmh) monster Wednesday as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina. (AP Photo/NOAA)

Feds Order Aid to Texas As Rita Threatens

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
12 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The government rushed hospital beds, rescue teams and evacuation buses to Texas on Wednesday in an urgent effort to brace for Hurricane Rita and prevent a replay of the missteps from Katrina.

President Bush, pledging to be "ready for the worst," declared a state of emergency in Texas and Louisiana. He pleaded with people to comply with mandatory evacuation orders issued in New Orleans and Galveston, Texas.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency sent nearly 1,200 medical and rescue personnel into Texas as Rita grew to a Category 5 storm — the highest level — in its sweep across the Gulf of Mexico.

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Other efforts to prepare for Rita included:

_Readying to ship medical supplies from the National Strategic Stockpile. That includes antibiotics to fight off infections and medications for chronic diseases. The Health and Human Services Department had medical staff set to head out along with Band-Aids, blankets, sterile gloves, portable oxygen tanks an other supplies.

_The Energy Department put its four Strategic Petroleum Reserve sites on the Gulf Coast on alert and was ready to consider additional requests for loans of oil should Texas refineries need crude. Two of the four sites are on the Texas coast northeast and southwest of Galveston where the storm was expected to slam into the mainland. The other two are in Louisiana. The underground caverns hold nearly 700 million barrels of oil.

_The American Red Cross worked to line up volunteers and food and helping to move people out of Rita's path, spokeswoman Carrie Martin said. The charity was preparing to serve 750,000 meals a day to Rita's victims.

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Associated Press Writers Lolita C. Baldor, Robert Burns, Pauline Jelinek, Jennifer Loven, H. Josef Hebert, Terence Hunt and Kevin Freking contributed to this report

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050921

Up to 20 Dead in Fire Aboard Evacuees' Bus

7 minutes ago

WILMER, Texas - A bus carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire early Friday on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing as many as 20 people, authorities said.


"We believe it's going to be closer to 20 fatalities," Dallas County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Don Peritz said.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050923/ap_on_re_us/rita_bus_explosion_hk1

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AP - Thu Sep 22, 6:30 PM ET
All lanes of Interstate 45 carry northbound traffic as motorists evacuate in advance of Hurricane Rita, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2005, near Buffalo, Texas. Gov. Rick Perry halted all southbound traffic into Houston along Interstate 45 on Thursday and took the unprecedented step of opening all eight lanes to northbound traffic out of the city for 125 miles. Interstate 45 is the primary evacuation route north from Houston and nearby Galveston. (AP Photo/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ralph Lauer)

Approaching Rita Already Causing Havoc

AP - 8 minutes ago
BEAUMONT, Texas - Hurricane Rita steamed toward refinery towns along the Texas-Louisiana coast with 125 mph winds Friday, creating havoc even before it arrived: Levee breaks caused new flooding in New Orleans, and as many as 24 people were killed when a bus carrying nursing-home evacuees caught fire in a traffic jam.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/tropical_storms_and_hurricanes;....
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[21 Sep 2005]
LONDON (AFP)


World oil prices made strong gains as Hurricane Rita gathered speed and threatened fresh damage to vital US Gulf of Mexico platforms and refineries, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November jumped 1.25 dollars to 67.45 dollars per barrel in early trading.

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for November delivery gained 95 cents to 65.15 dollars per barrel.

"It is way too premature to speculate about how much damage (there) could be but clearly there is potential for new highs," CALYON analyst Mike Wittner said.

http://servihoo.com/channels/kinews/afp_details.php?id=98807&CategoryID=47

Rita Could Be Strongest Storm to Hit Texas

By PAM EASTON, Associated Press Writer
7 minutes ago

GALVESTON, Texas - Gaining strength with frightening speed, Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 165-mph monster Wednesday as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina.

"It's scary. It's really scary," Shalonda Dunn said as she and her 5- and 9-year-old daughters waited to board a bus arranged by emergency authorities in Galveston. "I'm glad we've got the opportunity to leave. ... You never know what can happen."

With Rita projected to hit Texas by Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating. And New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.

Galveston, low-lying parts of Corpus Christi and Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m., it went from a 115-mph Category 2 to a 165-mph Category 5.

Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and easily one of the most powerful ever to plow into the U.S. mainland. Category 5 is the highest on the scale, and only three Category 5 hurricanes are known to have hit the U.S. mainland — most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

Government officials eager to show they had learned their lessons from the sluggish response to Katrina sent in hundreds of buses to evacuate the poor, moved out hospital and nursing home patients, dispatched truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and put rescue and medical teams on standby. An Army general in Texas was told to be ready to assume control of a military task force in Rita's wake.

"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we got to be ready for the worst," President Bush said in Washington.

By Wednesday evening, Rita was centered about 580 miles east-southeast of Galveston and was moving west near 13 mph. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi.

But with its breathtaking size — tropical storm-force winds extending 350 miles across — practically the entire western end of the U.S. Gulf Coast was in peril, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans.

In the Galveston-Houston-Corpus Christi area, about 1.3 million people were under orders to get out, in addition to 20,000 or more along with the Louisiana coast. Special attention was given to hospitals and nursing homes, three weeks after scores of sick and elderly patients in the New Orleans area drowned in Katrina's floodwaters or died in the stifling heat while waiting to be rescued.

Military personnel in South Texas started moving north, too. Schools, businesses and universities were also shut down. Some sporting events were canceled.

Galveston was a virtual ghost town by mid-afternoon Wednesday. In neighborhoods throughout the island city, the few people left were packing the last of their valuables and getting ready to head north.

Helicopters, ambulances and buses were used to evacuate 200 patients from Galveston's only hospital. And at the Edgewater Retirement Community, a six-story building near the city's seawall, 200 elderly residents were not given a choice.

"They either go with a family member or they go with us, but this building is not safe sitting on the seawall with a major hurricane coming," said David Hastings, executive director. "I have had several say, `I don't want to go,' and I said, `I'm sorry, you're going.'"

Galveston, a city of 58,000 on a coastal island 8 feet above sea level, was the site of one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history: an unnamed hurricane in 1900 that killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people and practically wiped the city off the map.

The last major hurricane to strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.

In Houston, the state's largest city and home to the highest concentration of Katrina refugees, the area's geography makes evacuation particularly tricky. While many hurricane-prone cities are right on the coast, Houston is 60 miles inland, so a coastal suburban area of 2 million people must evacuate through a metropolitan area of 4 million people where the freeways are often clogged under the best of circumstances.

Mayor Bill White urged residents to look out for more than themselves.

"There will not be enough government vehicles to go and evacuate everybody in every area," he said. "We need neighbor caring for neighbor."

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt issued a stern warning to anyone staying behind that looting would not be tolerated and anyone caught stealing after the storm would be prosecuted.

At the Galveston Community Center, where 1,500 evacuees had been put on school buses to points inland, another lesson from Katrina was put into practice: To overcome the reluctance of people to evacuate without their pets, they were allowed to bring them along in crates.

"It was quite a sight," Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. "We were able to put people on with their dog crates, their cat crates, their shopping carts. It went very well."

But Thomas warned late Wednesday that the city was nearly out of buses. She said those left on the island will have to find a way off or face riding out a storm that is "big enough to destroy part of the island, if not a great part of the county."

City Manager Steve LeBlanc said the storm surge could reach 50 feet. Galveston is protected by a seawall that is only 17 feet tall. More than 180 police officers were expected to stay behind to guard the city, along with 117 firefighters.

Rita approached as the death toll from Katrina passed the 1,000 mark — to 1,036 — in five Gulf Coast states. The body count in Louisiana alone was put at 799, most found in the receding floodwaters of New Orleans.

The Army Corps of Engineers raced to fortify the city's patched-up levees for fear the additional rain could swamp the walls and flood the city all over again. The Corps said New Orleans' levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin estimated only 400 to 500 people remained in the vulnerable east bank areas of the city. They, too, were ordered to evacuate. But only a few people lined up for the evacuation buses provided. Most of the people still in the city were believed to have their own cars.

"I don't think I can stay for another storm," said Keith Price, a nurse at New Orleans' University Hospital who stayed through Katrina and had to wade to safety through chest-deep water. "Until you are actually in that water, you really don't know how frightening it is."

Rita also forced some Katrina refugees to flee a hurricane for the second time in 3 1/2 weeks. More than 1,000 refugees who had been living in the civic center in Lake Charles, near the Texas state line, were being bused to shelters farther north.

"We all have to go along with the system right now, until things get better," said Ralph Russell of the New Orleans suburb of Harvey. "I just hope it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would smash into key oil installations in Texas and the gulf. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation's total oil output.

Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. The hurricane season is not over until Nov. 30.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050922/ap_on_re_us/rita

Rita Brings Flooding Fears to New Orleans

By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Outer bands of rain from Hurricane Rita began lashing New Orleans on Thursday, the first rainfall since Katrina, raising fears that the patched-up levee system could fail and swamp the city all over again.

A direct hit from Hurricane Rita was still unlikely, but the Category 5 storm veered on a more northerly course on its way to the Texas coast and a tropical storm warning extended as far east as New Orleans. Already, forecasts for southeast Louisiana called for between 3 and 5 inches of rain.

Engineers warned residents that the fractured levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.

"We're already getting a few spotty showers in the New Orleans area," meteorologist Robert Ricks said. "There are going to be brief periods of brief heavy downpours as these squall bands move through."

The new forecasts added urgency to the efforts by the Army Corps of Engineers to shore up levees with sandbags and add portable pumps through the city in anticipation of more flooding.

"Right now, it's a wait and see and hope for the best," said Corps spokesman Mitch Frazier.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050922/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina_hk2

Houston-Area Residents Flee As Rita Nears

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago

GALVESTON, Texas - Traffic came to a standstill and gas shortages were reported Thursday as hundreds of thousands of people in the Houston metropolitan area rushed to get out of the path of Hurricane Rita, a monster storm with 170 mph winds.

More than 1.3 million residents in Texas and Louisiana were under orders to evacuate to avoid a deadly repeat of Katrina.

The Category 5 storm weakened slightly Thursday morning, and forecasters said it could be down to a Category 3 — meaning winds as high as 130 mph — by the time it comes ashore late Friday or early Saturday. But it could still be a dangerous storm — one aimed straight at a section of coastline with the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050922/ap_on_re_us/rita

Houston-area residents flee as Rita nears

Storm Changed Americans' Attitudes

By ERIN McCLAM, AP National Writer
1 hour, 28 minutes ago

A 64-year-old Alabamian frets about frayed race relations. A Utah software programmer ponders the slow government response to Hurricane Katrina and decides he'll turn to his church first in a disaster created by nature or terrorists.

A woman scraping by on disability pay in northern Virginia puts her house on the market because of surging post-storm gas and food prices. Cheaper to live in Pennsylvania, she figures.

As the Gulf Coast braces for another monster storm, a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll shows Katrina prompted a rethinking of some signature issues in American life — changing the way we view race and our safety, how we spend our money, even where we live.

The poll shows that issues swirling around Katrina trump other national concerns.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050922/ap_on_re_us/katrina_changing_attitudes_hk4
Asked to rank eight topics that should be priorities for President Bush and Congress, respondents placed the economy, gas prices and Iraq high. But when Katrina recovery was added to the list, it swamped everything else.

Like bands of the storm itself, Katrina's reach in American life is vast: 1 in 3 Americans believes the slow response will harm race relations. Two-thirds say surging gas prices will cause hardship for their families. Half say the same of higher food prices.

In Las Cruces, N.M., Ariana Darley relies on carpools to get to parenting classes, or to make doctor's appointments with her 1-year-old son, Jesse. Before, she chipped in $5 for gas. Now, she pays $10 to $15.

"I didn't think it would affect me," she says by telephone, with Jesse crying in the background. "But it costs a lot of money now. I have to go places, and now it adds up."

After a crisis with indisputable elements of race and class — searing images of mostly poor, mostly black New Orleans residents huddled on rooftops or waiting in lines for buses — some Americans worry about strains in the nation's social fabric.

Women were especially concerned. One of them is Sue Hubbard of Hueytown, Ala., 64 years old. She does not believe race played a deliberate part in who got out of New Orleans, but she is deeply worried about tensions inflamed by those who do.

"I just think it took everybody by surprise," says Hubbard, who is white. "I don't care if it would have been the president himself, they couldn't have gotten there to those people. Some people — not everybody — are trying to make a racist thing out of it."

The poll underscores the literal reach of Katrina as well: 55 percent of Americans say evacuees from Katrina have turned up in their cities or communities, raising concerns about living conditions for the refugees, vanishing jobs for locals and — among 1 in 4 respondents — increased crime.

Among respondents with incomes under $25,000 per year, 56 percent were concerned about living conditions for refugees in shelters; that was higher than among those who make more money. And the poll indicates people in the South, which has absorbed huge masses of evacuees, are most concerned about the costs to their local governments.

Ann McMullen, 52, of Killeen, Texas, who works as a school administrator at Fort Hood, says she worries about gang violence, simply because of the prodigious numbers of people flowing into Texas communities.

"They can't even locate the sex offenders," she says. "And every population has gang members. It's theft, it's murder, it's more chaotic crimes in the community. Hopefully we'll be able to put these people back to work."

The poll also exposes a divide among Americans in how the government should respond when disasters strike areas particularly prone to catastrophe — landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes. Half say the government should give people in those zones money for recovery, but almost as many say those people should live there at their own risk.

About 4 in 10 say the government should prohibit people from building new homes in those endangered areas in the first place. As McMullen puts it: "You're asking for another disaster to happen."

Katrina has also raised grave doubts among Americans about just who will protect them in the aftermath of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.

Only about a quarter of Americans believe the federal government was as prepared as it should have been to cope with a disaster of Katrina's magnitude. Only slightly more than half, 54 percent, are confident in the federal government's ability to handle a future major disaster.

Reed Chadwick, a 33-year-old software programmer from Herriman, Utah, has made a mental list of the organizations he can count on should Mother Nature or terrorists strike — church first, then local government, then the feds.

"I think a lot of people have been yelling at Bush," he says. "But I think they're not looking at their local leaders for answers or reasons why things did or did not work. A lot of people are asking questions."

As for other personal effects of the storm, rising gas prices have not been crippling for his household yet, he says. "But I know it's going to put a dent into my budget. I won't be able to do dinner as much, maybe take only one vacation, if that."

For Pam Koren, the storm's impact has been more immediate — and more drastic.

Suffering from low blood sugar, spasms of the esophagus and nerve damage, she exists now on disability pay and contributions from her daughter, who attends college and works as an assistant youth minister.

With gas and food prices rising after the storm, she says, she was forced to put her house in Burke, Va., on the market. She is considering east-central Pennsylvania, and a less expensive home.

"I'm a wreck because I'm not sure I'm making the right decision," she says. "I didn't want to have to do this, but things have become so tight I have not had a choice. I did not expect things were going to get this bad."

The poll of 1,000 adults conducted by Ipsos, an international polling company, had a margin of potential sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AP - Thu Sep 22, 3:44 PM ET
A man that did not want to be identified nor explain his situation sits down after police checked on him in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2005. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is keeping an eye on Hurricane Rita. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Reuters - Thu Sep 22, 8:59 PM ET A Houston resident waits on the road to Dallas as thousands in cars evacuate ahead of Hurricane Rita in north Houston September 22, 2005. Evacuees jammed Texas highways and Louisiana braced for its second major hurricane in less than a month as Rita roared through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday toward the center of the U.S. oil industry. The path of Rita, downgraded to a Category 4 hurricane when its winds fell to 145 mph, shifted northward and appeared to be headed slightly east of Galveston and Houston, the National Hurricane Center said. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Government Hails Early Response to Rita

AP - 2 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The government's emergency coordinators on Sunday credited better stockpiling of supplies, early evacuations and more military muscle for saving lives during Hurricane Rita as President Bush pushed to give the Pentagon a larger role in future disasters

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/tropical_storms_and_hurricanes;_ylt=AhtwRky14ZkHiBA62qDLdzpH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTBidHQxYjh2BHNlYwN5bnN0b3J5

Rita's Rains Start Falling on New Orleans

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer
48 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - In a grim opening salvo from Hurricane Rita, a steady rain began falling Thursday on New Orleans for the first time since Katrina laid waste to the city, and engineers rushed to shore up the broken levees for fear of another ruinous round of flooding.

The forecast called for 3 to 5 inches of rain in New Orleans in the coming days. That is dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into neighborhoods that have been dry for less than a week.

The storm took a sharper-than-expected turn to the right on Thursday, setting it on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit. But that raised the risk that the hurricane could strike much closer to New Orleans.

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050923/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina_hk2

Texans Flee Rita for Major Traffic Jams

By MIKE GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer
43 minutes ago

HOUSTON - Hurricane Rita closed in on the Texas Gulf Coast and the heart of the U.S. oil-refining industry with howling 145 mph winds Thursday, but a sharper-than-expected turn to the right set it on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit.

The storm's march toward land sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the nation's fourth-largest city in a frustratingly slow, bumper-to-bumper exodus.

"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," said Judie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte. "They say we've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina. Well, you couldn't prove it by me."

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050923/ap_on_re_us/rita

AFP/File - Thu Sep 22,10:10 PM ET
A helicopter lifts a sand bag to drop at a levee breach in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. As Hurricane Rita approaches, 800 sandbags weighing 4.5 tonnes each were placed nearby and 2,500 more were on the way to plug any future breaches as quickly as possible(AFP/File/James Nielsen)

AP - Sat Sep 24, 4:11 AM ET
This NOAA satellite image taken Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005 at 2:45 a.m. EDT shows Hurricane Rita moving over land near the Texas/Louisiana border as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 120 mph. The storm is expected to move very slowly north and then stall over eastern Texas. Clouds associated with Tropical Depression Philippe can be seen south of Bermuda. Thick clouds can be seen over the Dakotas and are associated with showers and thunderstorms. Some clouds are also over the Ohio Valley, with showers forming over the region. (AP Photo/NOAA)

Rita Likely to Spark Rise in Gas Prices

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press Writer
19 minutes ago

HOUSTON - The millions of Texans who fled Houston and other Gulf Coast cities to avoid Hurricane Rita are likely to pay higher prices for gasoline — if they can find it — on their return trips home.

And even if Rita's damage to Texas and Louisiana oil refineries and pipeline operations proves to be less than was feared, motorists around the country still face the prospect of at least another short-term spike in pump prices, analysts said.

"We're going higher in terms of retail prices," at least in the short term, because of tight supplies, said analyst Tom Kloza of Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J. "Rita was more than a nuisance, but short of a catastrophe."

Pump prices, which are already 47 percent higher than a year ago at $2.75 per gallon, could once again climb above $3 a gallon nationwide, analysts said. Supply snags are most problematic for the Gulf Coast, but markets in the East and Midwest are also vulnerable.

Twenty refineries along the Gulf Coast remained closed on Saturday, including four that were badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina almost a month ago. They account for 19 percent of total fuel refining capacity nationwide.

The biggest of those facilities, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s massive Baytown refinery and chemical plants located outside Houston near Galveston Bay, is being prepared for a restart, company officials said on Saturday.

Still, it's likely to be some time before the output of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel is back to normal. "Refineries can't just push a button and get everything running like normal. You have to take these units up in a systematic way," said William Veno, an analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Officials at Explorer Pipeline Co., one of several oil and fuel pipelines that carry product from the Gulf Coast to markets in the East and Midwest shuttered prior to Rita's arrival, said on Saturday that they found no visible damage so far and could restart operations as early as Monday. Colonial Pipeline Co. also said it expects to resume pumping once fuel supplies and local power are available.

Texans moving inland to avoid Rita faced traffic backups of epic proportions as gas stations along the exit routes ran dry. Those shortages continued on Saturday, leading a frustrated Houston Mayor Bill White to declare the situation "totally unacceptable."

But Harry Quarls, senior managing director for Booz Allen Hamilton's global energy division, said backloading inventory is costly and can be risky.

Part of the problem, he said, is that some motorists are buying gas they really don't need. "Whenever there is a storm, people top off their tanks and you get this one-time boost in demand," he said.

Tamesha Wiley, who didn't evacuate from Houston, waited in line for two hours to fill her minivan at a Texaco station about 25 minutes north of downtown Houston on Saturday. "If I don't get it now, I might not get it for days," she said.

Concerns over long gas lines and empty pumps, as well as jammed thoroughfares, kept James Spriggs Jr. at home for the hurricane. "All of the places were without gas — I mean everywhere," said Spriggs, a seventh grade English teacher in Houston who opted to stay at the Wyndham Hotel & Resorts about 15 miles north of downtown Houston.

"Now I look at the stations and still hardly anyone is open," he said. "I saw one place with some trouble. At least four or five people were sitting on the ground in handcuffs."

Some relief may be on the way for those making their way back to the Houston area.

On Saturday, Shell Oil Co., a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and Motiva Enterprises LLC said four tanker trucks loaded with gasoline before the storm have already been dispatched for local distribution and will return to the terminal for re-loading immediately after leaving designated stations.

Priorities will be given to evacuation routes along Interstate 45, Interstate 10 and Highway 290, which had back ups so bad that some motorists either gave up on leaving, pulled to the side of the road to await the congestion or ran out of gas.

Shell spokeswoman Anne Peebles said 20 tankers carrying 9,000 gallons of fuel had been on the road through the afternoon and another 10 were scheduled to go out by the end of Saturday.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked fuel terminal owners and operators to fill any gas retailer's request for gasoline supplies, even those outside their normal contractual arrangements. He said terminal operators would be reimbursed for all shipments.

But Perry asked evacuees not to begin returning home yet. State officials have announced a staggered plan for the return of evacuees to the Houston area starting Sunday.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050925/ap_on_bi_ge/rita_gasoline_hk3

Rita slams into Gulf Coast
Authorities Urge Evacuees to 'Stay Put'
AP - 1 hour, 53 minutes ago
BEAUMONT, Texas - Hurricane Rita pummeled east Texas and the Louisiana coast Saturday, battering communities with floods and intense winds, but residents were relieved the once-dreaded storm proved far less fierce and deadly than Katrina.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/tropical_storms_and_hurricanes

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Reuters - Sun Sep 25,12:26 AM ET
A television cameraman films at the Yaga's Cafe building where an exterior wall collapsed in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita in downtown Galveston, Texas September 24, 2005. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)

Texas, La. Begin Cleaning Up After Rita

By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer
31 minutes ago

BEAUMONT, Texas - Rattled by Hurricane Rita, residents along the Texas and Louisiana coasts began clearing away debris as power crews worked to restore electricity to more than 1 million customers in four states.

They also breathed a sigh of relief that the devastation caused by the once-dreaded storm was less severe than that caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Saturday he saw plenty of damage during a helicopter tour over the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, but added: "There's none of that just-down-to-the-foundation devastation that we saw out of Mississippi" after Katrina.

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050925/ap_on_re_us/rita

AP - Sat Sep 24,10:52 PM ET
This aerial photo taken from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter shows damage and flooding in Gibbstown Bridge, La., Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita. (AP Photo/David L. Ryan, Pool)

Rita's Death Toll Climbs With 5 More Dead
AP - 26 minutes ago
BEAUMONT, Texas - Rescuers pushed their way into once-inaccessible neighborhoods as Hurricane Rita's floodwaters receded along the Texas-Louisiana coast Monday. The death toll climbed to seven when the bodies of five people were discovered in a Beaumont apartment. The five ? a man, a woman and three children ? apparently were overcome by carbon monoxide from a generator they were using after the hurricane knocked out the electricity over the weekend, authorities said.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/World/Tropical_Storms_and_Hurricanes

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Reuters - Mon Sep 26,10:25 AM ET
A gas station is damaged after Hurricane Rita pounded Nederland, Texas, September 24, 2005. (Fred Greaves/Reuters)